Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge

by Paul Krueger

  “Group events?” Bucket shook his head so hard his piercings rattled. “But the energy fields or whatever—”

  “Horseshit,” Vincent said. “Those suckers will group if they’re strong enough. I’ve seen it happen. Meaning, that was so long ago I really could see.”

  The Alechemists fell silent.

  “The summer I was back from fighting in the jungle,” Vincent continued, “I got my first job as a bartender and signed up for a whole new fight. Just a little bit after I started, we got tremens popping up by the delirium—that’s what you call a group of them. At one point we topped out with a delirium nearly thirty strong wreaking havoc up and down Diversey. It took sixteen bartenders to beat them down, and then we worked overtime to make the citizens forget. Blamed it all on some antiwar protest or something.”

  “And then what?” Bailey said. Bucket offered her the last cup of coffee, but she shook it off.

  “Trust me,” he said. “You need this.”

  In the corner Zane was already sitting straighter, blinking behind his gauze, and Mona was carefully, almost tenderly, dabbing blood from his eyebrow. Bailey took the coffee and slurped it so fast she burned her mouth.

  “We asked the Court for more resources,” Vincent said. “We were pretty sure the next time was gonna be fucking Armageddon.”

  “And what happened?” Bailey said.

  “Nothing.” Vincent practically spat out the word. “The Court told us it couldn’t verify our reports—that’s why you always get a witness statement before you black them out, kiddo—and it needed to weigh its options.”

  “But what about the next time a delirium showed up?” said Bucket.

  “That’s the fucking thing,” said Vincent. “They didn’t. After that one, it went right back to solo events. Overnight. The Court patted us on the back for scaring the monsters away, and that was that.” He hesitated for a moment before continuing. “A couple months later, after I’d lost my eyes, the Court got in touch again. Wanted to set me up with my own shop. Said I’d shown I was ready.”

  “You make that sound like a bad thing,” Bailey said as Poppy jingled past her.

  “I was in rehab,” Vincent said. “I was busy learning how to live without my goddamned eyes. But you know who else got the same offer as blind boy Vincent? Everyone who survived the Battle of Diversey. Got their own bars and were soon too wrapped up in running a shop to worry about when the next delirium would show up. But that wasn’t right. I could see it wasn’t right, and I’m blind.”

  “Why?” said Mona. Bailey jumped a little; Mona had been so quiet.

  “Bad batch of gin,” he said. “Thought everyone knew that.”

  “No,” said Mona. “Why did you notice?”

  “I was fresh out of the jungle,” he said. “I was done taking things at face value. Done with governments. Done ignoring my gut. But when I went around and talked to everyone, everyone who survived that night, no one wanted to talk back. Never wanted to mention it again. Someone shut them up.”

  Bailey’s eyes narrowed. “The Court?”

  “They never said so,” said Vincent, “and I got too wrapped up in this place to push the issue. Last time I tried to bring it up at a Tribunal meeting was back in eighty-two, but the topic got spiked by their newest Tribune. My old battle partner. Got the sweetest deal of us all post-Diversey.” He scowled so hard it was almost a smile. “Last time I ever trusted Garrett Whelan.”

  The room went uncomfortably still.

  “Enough with the history lesson,” Vincent said. “This shit’ll get sorted out later. Right now you’re alive, and that’s what matters.”

  “Thanks.”

  It was Zane who had spoken.

  “I can’t believe—” He swallowed. “There were so many of them.”

  “I wish I could’ve seen it,” Vincent said, and Bailey almost believed him. “You know what you kids need after a night like this?”

  “A cleanup crew,” Bailey said, thinking of the oozy puddles of tremens goop still pocking the street. “And maybe the police and—”

  “No,” Vincent said. “You need a cab ride home. I’m paying.”

  Bailey awoke on Zane’s couch with her coat draped like a blanket over her body. Bucket, snoring on the floor, was curled around the coffee table. The door to Zane’s room was closed, but she assumed he was in there.

  She stretched and caught sight of her own arm, still crusted with dried garbage. Gross. Bailey groaned and jumped up, but Bucket didn’t stir. She rubbed her head, then padded over to the kitchen and set about making coffee. Maybe it was rude to rummage through the cabinets, but her overpowering need for caffeine won out over politeness. Besides, they would all thank her when they woke up to a fresh pot.

  Once the coffee started brewing, she walked over to the makeshift bar and sat on a stool. She must’ve dozed off because after what seemed like a minute, someone was prodding a cup of black coffee under her nose. Through blurry vision, Bailey took note of dark, slender fingers wrapped around a mug. Mona. She moaned and pushed herself upright. “Thanks,” she said.

  Mona nodded. “It will help you feel less dead.”

  Was Mona ever not drinking coffee? Bailey frowned. “You know caffeine will stunt your growth, right?”

  Mona grunted.

  “I take it we’ve got you to thank for this?” Holding his own mug, Zane popped up over Mona’s shoulder. He was wearing an old drama club T-shirt and ratty sweatpants, and his unruly hair poked out between bandages. Much more like the old Zane.

  “Yeah,” Bailey said. “I had to be good for something.”

  Mona was wearing pajamas, too. Peach silk. She must keep a set here, Bailey thought. Her heart wriggled inside her chest.

  Zane was grinning. “You’re good for more than just coffee,” he said. “Mona was telling me about last night. Using a Dumpster as a getaway car and a projectile? I knew you could be resourceful, Bailey, but damn.”

  “You should’ve seen me the time I tried to steal a birdbath.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Bailey said with a shrug. “I just get good ideas when I’m drinking, I guess.”

  “Yeah, well, still.” Zane smiled. “Thank you for saving my bony ass.”

  “And mine,” added Mona.

  “Yours is not bony,” Zane said, kissing her cheek. Bailey grimaced into her coffee.

  “Hey!” Bucket stuck his head out of the kitchen. His unmohawked hair had swooped over one side of his face, and he wore a bright blue apron that read “#1 Grillmaster.”

  “Hey!” Bailey said a little too brightly. “Hey, everyone, it’s Bucket! Let’s all talk to him!”

  “Um, yeah,” Bucket said, looking to where Zane and Mona were making dumb faces at each other. “Break it up, lovebirds. These pancakes aren’t going to eat themselves.”

  Pancakes. Bailey could’ve wept. “Make them be here,” she said, pointing at her mouth.

  Bucket beamed. “You can get them yourself, American scum,” he said cheerfully.

  “Come on,” said Zane, pulling away from Mona. “I splurged on all the best supplies. Pure maple syrup, so some people won’t bitch every time they come for breakfast.”

  Bucket stuck out his pierced tongue.

  “Bacon for me.” Zane said. “Pop-Tarts for also me, and pancakes for … other people.” He looked for a long moment at Bailey.

  Bucket, oblivious, swept a hand into the kitchen. “Well, who’s hungry?”

  Apparently all of them were. Together the Alechemists chowed through a box’s worth of pancake mix, plus two pounds of bacon, three packs of strawberry Pop-Tarts, and half a tube of burned pop-and-bake cinnamon rolls.

  “Did you forget to grease the pan?” Bailey hiccupped. Zane had mixed up a round of nonmagical bloody marys, and it was a little difficult to keep her dexterity as she chipped a blackened hunk of roll with a butter knife. The room was galley style, with barely enough space for two, but somehow the four of them crammed in.
/>   Bucket and Zane, wearing one oven mitt apiece, stared down at the tray. Zane swallowed. “Um.”

  “Using a Bundt pan was also inadvisable,” said Mona with a bored glance at Bucket. She sat on the windowsill, smoking.

  Bailey finally freed a chunk and popped it in her mouth. “Tastes okay, though.” She chewed thoughtfully. “Who cares if it’s weird shaped?”

  “That’s what she—”

  “Bucket.”

  Bailey ate and drank and laughed until her stomach hurt. She was still hung over and stiff from sleeping on the couch, but for the first time in a while, she felt happy. Really happy. Normal, even.

  At long last they threw all the dishes into some soapy water and flopped into the living room.

  “So,” Zane said.

  Bucket belched.

  “So,” Zane said again, “now that we’re all up and fed, we’ve got stuff to talk about.”

  Bucket, full of food or alcohol, or both, had flung himself onto the couch, so Bailey dropped onto a cushion on the floor. When they were seated, Zane thudded his mug against the coffee table, much like his uncle had done with the shot glass at the Tribunal. “This is an emergency meeting of the Alechemists,” he said, not un-pompously, “to discuss what the fuck we saw last night. Everyone’s present, and I’ve got Bucket’s proxy vote.”

  From the couch, a sleeping Bucket grunted in assent. Maybe he’s Sleepy Ernie’s long-lost son, Bailey thought.

  “Tremens are, by nature, solitary hunters.” Zane said. “For them to be appearing in numbers, let alone working together so closely, means something’s up.”

  “Like what?” Bailey said. “Like what Vincent saw?”

  Mona and Zane exchanged a glance.

  Bailey frowned. “What?”

  “Vincent has credibility issues,” Zane said. “You heard how he found a way to drag my uncle’s name into it.”

  Bailey swirled the milk in her fifth cup of coffee. “And?”

  “And … here’s the thing,” said Zane. “Vincent hates Garrett. Always has. The two of them were coming up as bartenders around the same time, and they used to patrol the North Side together. Vincent’s always had his whole rebel complex. The second Garrett became authority, Vincent got too cool to team up.”

  “So you’re saying Vincent thinks he’s a sellout?” That didn’t make sense. In the few weeks she’d been his employee, she’d known Vincent to be sly, blunt, and coarse enough to sand floorboards. But she’d never had reason to think of him as jealous or petty.

  Zane shrugged. “Garrett’s a Tribunal on the Chicago chapter of the Cupbearers Court and the longest serving in the Court’s entire history. He’s made this town what it is. Vincent’s still stuck in the same hole the Court gave him as a handout a quarter century ago. He’s bitter.”

  Bailey pursed her lips. “He’s a good bartender. And a damn good teacher.”

  Zane fell silent.

  Mona regarded Bailey coolly. “We should bring this to the Court,” she said. “Vincent may have credibility problems, but you don’t, Zane. Your uncle will listen to you.”

  Bailey shook her head. “Zane doesn’t have proof,” she said. “He was down in the garbage while I—we were killing them. Will they even listen to the rest of us? Maybe we should just go investigate. Get some data.”

  It was weird. Bailey was ordinarily all for hierarchy and structure and had no problem running to authority when things got sticky. As a kid she’d been called tattletale almost as often as she’d been called know-it-all. But something about handing this off to the grown-ups felt wrong. She wanted to be the grown-up for once.

  Mona gazed at her as if they were playing chess and Bailey had just made a particularly interesting move.

  Zane tapped a finger on his chin. “You’re both right,” he said thoughtfully. “Mona, we do have to bring this to the Court, and I’m probably the best guy to do it. Bailey, you’re right that we should be handling this ourselves. Which is why we’re going to. And we’re going to do it with the best tool a bartender can have.” His eyes gleamed with manic energy. “The Long Island iced tea.”

  Mona and Bailey shared a glance. Neither had expected the conversation to take this turn.

  “Zane—” Bailey started.

  But he sprang to his feet and dashed barefoot to the makeshift bar. “Last night I said I had a surprise for you guys. It’s something that came in the mail yesterday.” He rummaged through the bottles under the counter. “The Court manufactures all the optimized liquor we use for magic, but obviously it’s never worked for mixing the Long Island. Privately distilled small-batch stuff has more unstable magical frequencies, but that kind of chaos is exactly what makes this cocktail work. And since I don’t have a distillery in my back pocket, I’ve been collecting top-shelf ’shine from the best makers in the world. Yesterday I finally got my hands on the angels’ share.” He stood up, holding a tiny burlap sack. He pulled out a tiny brown bottle like a sword from its sheath. “I got it from a collector in Hong Kong.”

  “What is it?” Bailey said as a look of recognition crossed Mona’s face.

  “This,” Zane announced triumphantly, “is aged rum from a batch commissioned by Hortense LaRue. And it’s going to be the key ingredient in the first successful Long Island iced tea in centuries.”

  Bailey gaped. Mona’s jaw tensed. On the couch Bucket snored softly.

  “We’ve spent so long talking about the good we could do with a working Long Island iced tea.” Zane set the bottle gently on the bar. “About how we’d need something for the day the court wasn’t enough. If we have more nights like last night, then that day’s already here. Chicago needs this. It needs us.”

  “I’ve got your back, bud.” Bucket had snapped awake to a seated position.

  “You didn’t hear what he said,” said Mona, unfazed by his sudden entrance into the conversation.

  “No, but it sounded like he was doing one of his big inspirational speeches,” said Bucket with a languorous yawn. “I’m in. Also, is there more coffee?”

  Zane turned to Mona. “What about you, baby?”

  Mona, utterly unbabylike, eyed the bottle. “Home distilling is a dangerous game, Zane,” she said. “Vincent tried to make his own gin for a Long Island. It didn’t end well.”

  “Vincent is no Hortense LaRue,” said Zane. “If he’d kept his eyes on what was in his glass instead of on what my uncle had, they’d still work. He could’ve—look, we can’t afford to wait, Mona. I was useless last night. Never again.”

  Bailey thought briefly of Vincent: his blank eyes, his letterless keyboard, Poppy curled in her bed. “Wait,” she said. “If that’s how Vincent lost his sight, then maybe Mona’s right. That rum is crazy old. Maybe there’s a reason no one drank it.”

  “Bailey,” Zane said, “it’s me we’re talking about here. This is my life’s work. You’ve seen that I know what I’m doing. I’m just asking you to trust me one more time.”

  Bailey wished she could’ve just taken him at face value. But right now she didn’t know how the hell to feel about Zane Whelan. Not even when he was in his sweatpants.

  “I don’t think you should,” Mona said, folding her arms. “No, you shouldn’t. Full stop.”

  But whatever Bailey did feel, she wanted it to be more than what Mona felt. “Let’s do it,” she said quickly and then tried not to worry about what she’d gotten herself into. “Let’s mix ourselves a proper Long Island.”

  Zane’s face broke out into the crazy, contagious grin that made Bailey smile, made her feel proud and a little special. “That’s what I like to hear,” he said. “I’ll start measuring ingredients. Mona, there’s a special glass I keep in the top cabinet. Bailey, I’ve got some lemons in the fridge. Grab one, slice it, and shave off a few twists. There’s no way we’re making a Long Island without a garnish. And Bucket—”

  Bucket sat up, eyes filled with hope.

  Zane stopped. “Actually, I’m so used to having only three people, there�
�s kind of not anything for you to do. Uh, you can handle the music.”

  Gravely the Canadian drew his phone from the pocket of his biker jacket and held it aloft like a battle standard. “This is why God put me on this earth.”

  Zane pulled out a collection of tiny old bottles. Each shape was radically different: one was round as a teakettle; one so thin it looked as if it barely held a needle, let alone a dram of vodka; one curved into a loop and stopped with a cork. Apparently he’d been collecting them for a while. Carefully, as if they contained nitroglycerin, he poured the contents into special brass jiggers.

  Mona retrieved the glass: a highball, plain in design but with a particular curvature to the sides. She washed it so clean that it looked invisible in her hands.

  Bailey found a cutting board and laid waste to two lemons, giving Zane every kind of option for slice size and shape, as well as peels for garnish.

  With a few flicks of his thumb, Bucket filled the apartment with appropriately ominous punk rock. Over machine-gun drums and a tight spiky guitar, a singer wailed about digging up the bones of his lost love. Satisfied with the atmosphere, Bucket picked up a towel and polished the bar, lifting each bottle Zane had set down.

  Bailey took a plate and spent a moment arranging her peels and slices. It probably didn’t matter, but it made the task feel more like a proper arcane ritual. She figured that if she was investing in magic, she might as well go for broke. Admitting it to herself untangled a knot of unease. They were going to do it, goddammit, and she was going to help them. She wasn’t a tech millionaire at twenty-two, but she’d be part of the dev team responsible for a historic and delicious mystical breakthrough. Only she probably couldn’t put that on a résumé.

  The three Alechemists brought together their collective effort. On the space Bucket had prepared, Mona placed the glass filled with ice cubes. She didn’t have Zane’s or Bucket’s fervor or Bailey’s nervous excitement, but she moved with the same decisiveness she’d had last night, when she’d taken on the last tremens by herself.

  Wait, holy shit, that happened, Bailey thought. But before she could explore the memory in greater depth, Zane nodded for her to approach. She placed the plate of garnishes next to the glass, then out of instinct gave the bar a reverential nod before stepping back. She could’ve laughed. She was a barback again. It didn’t matter. Maybe it was their group enthusiasm, or maybe just Bucket’s choice in music, but she felt something palpably electric.